East Timor Peacekeepers Ambushed

3 Attackers Die

October 17, 1999|By New York Times News Service.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — In the sharpest clash of their three-week deployment in East Timor, Australian troops reported Saturday that they were ambushed and pinned down by armed men and that they killed three of their attackers before being rescued by helicopter.

The firefight was a sign of increasing conflicts in the remote territory as the Indonesian National Assembly prepares to vote on whether to accept East Timor's decision six weeks ago to break away and become an independent nation.

The mood in the assembly is defiant about the loss of the former Portuguese colony, which Indonesia invaded in 1975 and annexed as its 27th province. But most analysts here say that when the vote is taken, probably early this week, the assembly will accept East Timor's independence.

The assembly also is preparing to elect Indonesia's next president on Wednesday, said a former Cabinet minister, Sarwono Kusumaatmadja.

President B.J. Habibie, who is campaigning within the assembly to be elected to a full five-year term in office, made a surprise unilateral offer of independence to East Timor early this year, ignoring warnings made even by pro-independence leaders that more time was needed to calm the situation.

When the people of East Timor voted by nearly 90 percent on Aug. 30 to break from Indonesia, armed militias created and supported by the Indonesian military rampaged though the territory, driving much of the population from their homes and leveling almost all cities and towns.

This led to the creation of a multinational peacekeeping force, dominated by Australian troops, that entered East Timor on Sept. 21. Since then, the area has been mostly pacified, allowing aid to reach a growing number of displaced people.

But in the past week, peacekeeping patrols in the western part of the territory have clashed several times with small militia groups.

In Saturday's hourlong firefight, an Australian officer said, three militia members were wounded in addition to those killed, but no Australians were hurt. The officer, Col. Mark Kelly, said the engagement took place 10 miles from the border with West Timor, which is part of Indonesia and is a staging ground for the militias.

"I think the tactics they're employing show a level of training, a level of aggression," he said from Dili, East Timor's capital, suggesting that the Indonesian military was involved.

In Jakarta, a military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Sudrajat, said the encounter was still being investigated. But he denied that the Indonesian military was responsible for militia activities.